Visiting Faculty Fellow, University of Ghana and Visiting Scholar, Global & Environmental Health Lab
Faculty Fellow
Sylvia Esther Gyan (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Ghana, with over a decade of experience in teaching and research. Currently, she is a visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Ghana, completing the final year of her program at the University of Sussex, UK, as a Commonwealth Scholar. From 2018 to 2023, she served as an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the College of Public Health, University of South Florida. In 2019, she was honoured as an African Studies Association Carnegie Corporation of New York Scholar.
Her research focuses on Sociology of Health, with emphasis on adolescent sexual and reproductive health, maternal health, and child marriage. Her broader academic interests include Gender Studies, Climate Change, Ageing, and Migration. She is currently Co-Principal Investigator on the project "Utilising AI to Promote Sexual and Reproductive Health Outcomes for Adolescents with Disabilities in Ghana," funded by IDRC through the Infectious Disease Institute’s HASH program.
Prof. Gyan’s work has been published in leading international journals, including Current Sociology and Archives of Sexual Behaviour. She is deeply committed to collaborative, socially responsive research that informs policies to improve the lives of women and other vulnerable populations.
At the GEHLab, Sylvia works with Prof. Boateng to investigate the impact of housing and water insecurity on intimate partner violence among people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Kenya. Her research focuses on understanding how social and environmental factors shape health outcomes and contribute to vulnerabilities within marginalised communities. Through this work, Sylvia aims to generate evidence that can inform interventions and policies to improve the well-being of PLHIV.
Research Keywords
Reproductive Health; Resource Insecurities; Women; PLHIV; HIV; Older adults; Migrant Health
Themes | Global Health & Humanitarianism |
Status | Active |
Events |
Beyond Poverty: Socially Embedded Push Factors in Adolescent Rural-Urban Migration, with Sylvia Gyan | February 20, 2026 |
Related Work | |
Updates |
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